USEFUL LINKS ELECTRONIC MISCOUNTS, VOTES LOST PERVASIVE SECURITY FLAWS CENTER FOR VOTING & DEMOCRACY RELATED STORIES "ENHANCED SECURITY MEASURES" IRREGULARITIES IN FLORIDA E-VOTING MACHINES FAIL IN PRIMARIES

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The Supervisor of Elections for Miami-Dade County, Florida, announced Friday that her office had recovered missing electronic records of touch-screen votes from the 2002 primary elections in the race for Florida Governor. The records had been reported lost, after a series of computer crashes appeared to have wiped out the electronic files containing the record of the votes.

The 2002 Florida primary was the first major test of new touch-screen ballots in the state, and the process was marred by a number of glitches, vanished votes and records problems. This latest debacle brings to mind the disorder of the 2000 recount, as in the present case the Times reports "elections officials had scoured desks, drawers, shelves and closets for two days and nights" in order to locate the missing files.

The Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood admonished the Miami-Dade Elections Commission for not having in place a more reliable back-up and security system for its electronic records. Florida state law requires that electronic records of votes cast be secured and maintained for a minimum period of time after the vote, to permit election contests and protests, as provided for by Florida law.

According to the New York Times, "A study by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida found that 8 percent of votes, or 1,544, appeared to have been lost on touch-screen machines in 31 precincts in Miami-Dade County". The missing data would have been used to determine what happened to those 1,544 missing votes, but no such inquiry has yet been conducted, due to the crashed computers, the missing data, and the apparent confusion surrounding the proper administration and auditing of the touch-screen process.

Secretary Hood has herself been sued by one of Florida's congressional representatives (Robert Wexler) for not implementing voter verified paper ballots which would guarantee the security and the traceability of votes, and has previously refused to take a position on the flaws in touch-screen voting machines. She has publicly sided with Florida legislators who have expressed disinterest toward the verifiability of e-votes.

The spreading doubt about the state of Florida's commitment to a fair and legal election process is exacerbated by the fact that Florida law requires hand recounts of ballots in any election (such as 2000) where the margin is less than 0.5% of the vote. Chapter 102, Section 166 of Title IX of the Florida Statutes clearly defines the process by which elections officials are to ensure that an accurate count is obtained by manual recount in close elections.

The use of touch-screen machines with no paper audit trail may also violate the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, which 5 U.S. Supreme Court Justices ruled in 2000 must be applied to the manner in which all recounts are conducted statewide in Florida. That ruling halted the 2000 recount and handed the Electoral College to George W. Bush, and yet 4 years later, the state of Florida plans to implement a system in which not only will all Floridians not be provided with the same method of voting or the same manner of recount, but some will be permitted no manual recount at all, if required.

Published reports also suggest that the apparatus of Florida's state elections system, as headed by Secretary of State Hood, was aware of a significant software "glitch", which may have caused the touch-screen system to miss votes, as early as the spring of 2003. The system was used in elections during 2003, and Rep. Wexler suggests the state knew of the problems but took no action and allowed votes to potentially disappear or be miscounted.

The latest rash of confusion about the integrity of Florida's electoral system suggests that 4 years after perhaps the most scandalous vote-confusion in the nation's history, the state of Florida remains unprepared to conduct a fully open, fully legal and fully verifiable election this fall. [For more: NYT]